If we all pattern our behavior after the worst examples available to us then all is truly lost.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

The Political Pedophile Priest of Faux News

I only recently discovered Father Jonathan Morris, a web commentator for Fox News. I have no way of knowing if Father Jonathan genuinely believes the things he writes and says, or if he's simply hiring out his clerical collar in an effort to bestow moral legitimacy on the standard menu of right wing talking points.

That Fox bills him as their "Papal contributor" strongly suggests the latter. Iconoclastic columnist James Wolcott seems to view Father Jonathan in that light as well. In a Vanity Fair column from last fall, Wolcott wrote, "Leave it to Fox News to find the first neocon pinup priest to sign up as an on-air analyst."

I thought the "neocon pinup priest" epithet might be a bit harsh. Until, that is, I read Father Jonathan's recent article on the Haditha incident titled "War is Messy." It's a set piece of Rovewellian propaganda from start to finish.

Blame the Media, Support the Troops

Father Jonathan's article opens with a familiar bit of neoconservative revisionist history on the Vietnam Conflict:

Not long ago our country, led by bad news, betrayed our soldiers. We lost political will and we lost the war. How quickly we forget.

Now, as then, according to this hogwash, if we "lose" the war in Iraq it will be because bad news in the media caused Americans to "betray the troops."

The likes of Father Jonathan never want to admit that now, as then, defeat will come as a result of the acts of bad men who started a bad war for bad reasons and ran it badly. That would be too much like, uh, confessing the truth.

On the subject of the Haditha affair, Father Jonathan tells us that the Pentagon is preparing the public for bad news, but the bad news isn't the "revelation of criminal battle rage of a group of men in uniform." No, the kind of bad news the Pentagon is preparing us for is "bad news reporting, the kind that leads public opinion to betray the very men and women who risk their lives for ours."

And thus we're back to the main theme. The sin wasn't the crime; the sin was reporting the crime, which constitutes a betrayal.

Not content with repetition of his false main premise, Father Jonathan goes on to launch a "double straw man" attack on the media by putting words in the mouth of a general who puts words in the mouth of the collective press.

"Don’t take the bait, mass media," says Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli in the apocryphal speech Father Jonathan writes for him. "The deplorable actions of a few men are not representative of our military. Our soldiers, in contrast to the enemy, know the difference between right and wrong. In fact, it’s part of their training."

I haven't seen a single accusation in any reputable media outlet that suggests "the deplorable actions of a few" are representative of the overall moral behavior of the military. But you can bet a month's worth of collection plate contributions that Father Jonathan's Fox News audience will take his word for it that the entire "liberal" media is accusing every United States soldier, seaman, airman and Marine of eating babies for breakfast.

And just to make sure he's got every block in the anti-media playbook checked, Father Jonathan gets in the obligatory dig about how media reports of bad news "threaten morale," as if the real threat to morale weren't the incompetence and dishonesty of the troops' Commander in Chief, their Secretary of Defense, and the liege-men generals who have made successful military careers out of saying "yes."

As far as I'm concerned, Jonathan Morris has every right to hire himself out as a chorister in Karl Rove's noise philharmonic, but if he's going to do that, he really ought to quit hiding behind his pulpit and passing himself off as a representative of the Pope. As Wolcott put it, "It is not the job of a priest to be a pretty buttboy for the Pentagon and the warmaking powers of the United States."

I won't presume to guess what God makes of the guy, but in my judgment, political whore clerics like Jonathan Morris make pedophile priests look downright "pastoral."

Have you seen the current Army Times? I picked one up at the commissary today and I thought the front page article was very interesting. If this were on the cover of the NY Times or Washington Post, the right wing would be demanding they be strung up and charged with treason or something.

You left-leaning secularists are all the same---complaints and bomb-throwing without any actionable plans or facts to back up your rants. First of all, it is appalling to me that you would accuse anyone of being a pedophile based solely on his chosen "profession." Shame on you! The vast majority of clergy are honest and law-abiding members of our society.

And, just what would you do in Iraq? Would your plan make us safer? The war in Iraq is tragic and who knows where it will end. However, we are there and we need to achieve the objective of increasing our and our allies safety from terrorism and lessening radical Islam's control of the resources of the area.

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Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. Navy (retired) was a naval flight officer who commanded an aircraft squadron and was operations officer of USS Theodore Roosevelt, the carrier that fought the Kosovo War. He earned a master-of-arts degree in post-modern imperialism at the U.S. Naval War College where many of his essays became required student reading. Jeff’s weekly satires on U.S. foreign policy high jinks appear at Antiwar.com and his critically applauded novel Bathtub Admirals (Kunati Books), a lampoon on America's rise to global dominance, is on sale now. Jeff lives with dogs in a house by the beach on Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, and in the summer he has a nice tan.